Saturday, November 16, 2013

Movie Review: The Lost World 1960

Friday again, and again it’s a terrible movie we’re talking
about. In 1960, producer-director Irwin Allen, having made very successful,
spectacular documentaries, decided to cross over into thrillers, science
fiction, and fantasy with two star-studded films. One was the circus thriller
The Big Circus, and the other was a very loose adaptation of the Lost World. I
would have skipped a lengthy plot recap if the film even remotely resembled the
novelization, but this was not the case. After the recap I’ll go more into the
devastating changes in the plot. Suffice to say, I can sum up what went wrong here pretty easily-

The film begins with credits shown over a lava field, as if
the volcano is the star of the show. Plumes of flame announce the title, and
the stars’ names are proudly displayed. The movie’s first scene is of Professor
Edward Challenger disembarking into London
and being confronted by members of the press. The fact that he arrives by
passenger jet establishes that this story is being told in the 1960s, not 1913.
The protagonist, Edward Malone, annoys Challenger and is punched down the
staircase by the irate professor. While Challenger storms off, Malone meets a
young woman, Jennifer, who is the daughter of Malone’s boss.

We cut to a scientific talk by Challenger, being challenged
by his rival Summerlee as in the book. The rivalry is far more intense than in
the book, and the Summerlee thoroughly heckles Challenger. Challenger calls for
volunteers. Summerlee, Sir Roxton, and Malone, as in the book, all volunteer
for the expedition. However, Jennifer is also present and also volunteers. “There’ll be
no women on my expedition!” Challenger growls. Malone’s
boss comes to the rescue, promising to fund Challenger if he accepts Malone. Roxton is established as a callous playboy and
overall cad and as the romantic rival for Malone’s intentions on Jennifer.

Our next scene is Brazil, introducing two new
Hispanic stereotypes; helicopter pilot and singer Gomez and the goofy comic
relief host Costas.The love triangle is
established as Jennifer arrives, forcing herself into the party with her little
brother David. Jennifer shares scenes with Malone and Roxton, showing interest
in both. Challenger is the butt of more jokes, especially involving Jennifer’s
toy poodle Frosty.

A helicopter ride (there are no boats seen or even mentioned
in the film) takes them to the plateau, with Challenger stepping out and
proclaiming victory while Summerlee remains skeptical. That night, they are
visited by a monitor lizard covered with rubber fins and frills, leading to a
chase around the jungle (Jennifer is attacked by carnivorous vines and has to
be rescued by Roxton and Malone. Jennifer scream count: 1)until
the party returns to find their helicopter wrecked (Costas scream count: 1).
Challenger identifies it as a “Brontosaurus”. Summerlee laughs, and so do any
viewers who know what a Brontosaurus is

In the morning, Summerlee is nearly eaten by another plant,
and the party finds three-toed tracks, following them to their dinosaur. Said
dinosaur is an iguana with rubber horns (Jennifer scream count: 2). Frosty
barks at it, and the dinosaur’s roar chases them off.Later, they find they are being spied on by
a native Indian girl, whom Challenger has Malone run down and capture. Malone
finds her only by rescuing her from a poorly-composited red-legged tarantula
with a mirror ball lighting it.The
professors view her as a scientific specimen, but David protects her and tries
to befriend her. Roxton is not happy, knowing this will cause revenge from her
tribes. The rivalry between Malone and Roxton grows, winding up in a fight that
reveals a lost diary of a “Burton White”. This prompts Roxton to admit to being
part of an earlier expedition and explain his guilt over losing the party.
Turns out Gomez’s brother Santiago
was also on the expedition, and his hatred of Roxton grows. The earlier
expedition was not looking for dinosaurs, but for El Dorado and a diamond lode.

That night, Costas attempts to rape the indian, but she is saved by
David. Soon after, Gomez lures Roxton off, feigns injury, and tries to shoot
him-he misses, grazing Summerlee instead. The indian girl uses this distraction
to escape, Jennifer and Malone pursuing, and in turn they are pursued by the
“brontosaurus”. (Jennifer scream count: 3). They escape when another “dinosaur”
(a baby alligator given rubber horns and a Dimetrodon sail) arrives. The
dinosaurs fight, falling off a cliff, and Jennifer and Malone return to camp
only to be captured along with the rest of the group by the natives (Jennifer
scream count: 4).

The indians, lacking only bones through their noses, take
them to their underground cavern (Challenger proclaims “Obviously cannibals”. Costas
scream count: 2). There they wait for sacrifice while their chief performs,
from the sheer length and monotony of it, a percussion interpretation of a
Latin Mass. Challenger sets up the main setpiece of the film-“ “Plateau is in
danger of blowing up”. With that, every geologist in the audience just tried to
slit their wrists with their remote control. The Indian girl returns to save
David, and they escape to where the girl’s only other white friend lives. This
is the decrepit Burton White, inexplicably blind. White explains what went
wrong, how the natives will sacrifice them (Costas scream count: 3), that
Santiago is dead,that there are indeed
diamonds, and that escape can only mean fleeing through the molten heart of the
volcano (of course). The natives finally find out that the prisoners have
escaped, and the chase is on. Gomez tries to shoot Roxton again, but Costas
wants to find the diamonds first.

The party walks slowly through a fog-and-ribs set they name
“The Graveyard of the Damned” and then inch along the sheep cliff overlooking a
magma river. Challenger nearly falls (Jennifer scream count: 5) but they
escape, Gomez burning their path behind them and defeating the tribesmen. They
finally see the escape in a huge chamber, complete with steaming lake and
dammed (?!) lake (?!) of lava (?!), called appropriately enough “The Lake of
Fire”. Costas finds diamonds (already polished and cut), Challenger finds a
dinosaur egg (dinosaur laid eggs in volcanoes, don’t you know), and Gomez
finds a chance for revenge. He gives his big revenge speech to Roxton, but
Malone disarms him with a bag of diamonds.

Gomez’s gun awakens a horned finned monitor lizard, which
rises out of the lake and eats Costas (Costas scream: 4, Jennifer scream: 6),
but Roxton pulls Gomez to safety. To get past the lizard, Malone has to break
the rock dam with a log (?!). Gomez sacrifices his life (“A life for a life”)
by jumping onto the log, the dam breaks, the lava is released, the lizard dies,
and there is an inexplicable but inevitable earthquake and volcanic
eruption.Our heroes escape, and the
Lost world is destroyed (?!) by the eruption. Challenger reveals that he has
taken his egg with him and Roxton revealing he took diamonds with them. Roxton
gives the diamonds to Malone and Jennifer as an anniversary present and the egg
hatches to reveal a Tokay gecko with rubber horns. “Tyrannosaurus rex!”
announces Challenger with glee, and he says he will take it back to London.

What can I say? This film is terrible. I wouldn’t call it
worse than King Dinosaur-this film has actual actors and sets and budgets. The
cast does a decent job with the shoddy script and poor direction, Claude Rains
especially. The sets are beautiful-colorful, atmospheric and lush. The forest
is dense and green and deep, and the caverns excellently lit and majestic. The
feel of the film is very classical, invoking the same emotions and atmosphere
as a Rudolph Zallinger painting.

It’s just the rest is terrible. While Irwin Allen would
continue to put in big casts, they would be better developed than this one.
Doyle works because it is simply 4 main characters. Changing it up to 9 makes things
much more difficult. This Fellowship of the Plateau, as it were, is just poorly
developed. The two scientists provide only exposition and comic relief, and
very little else. Roxton is just an aristocratic cad. Malone is a smart-alec
and nothing more, with no motivation or depth. Jennifer is just an objectified
sexist stereotype, there to wear skin-tight pink pants, carry a toy poodle, and
scream constantly.Gomez and Costas are
broad stereotypes-the passionate, musical, fiery Latin lover and the greedy,
lustful, slothful, cowardly idiot.The
indian (never given a name) is just a plot device and her romance with David
(along with David’s character) another plot device.

The original book is about new frontiers in science, and
there’s a great deal of action. There’s even some sympathy towards native
cultures and the common brotherhood of humanity. Here, the racism and sexism
make this even less progressive than the novel. The women are just objects to
be endangered, only acting as hapless plot devices at best. The Brazilians are
Latino stereotypes, and the native peoples of the plateau are even worse. In
the book, the Indians save our heroes, giving them food, shelter, and killing
off both dinosaurs and marauding apemen. Here, they replace the apemen
entirely.

The characters are pale shadows at best. Malone doesn’t do
anything heroic and shows no motivation for joining or anything in the way of
depth of character. Challenger, Doyle’s favorite character, was brilliant,
cocky, courageous, snarky and a force of nature. Roxton was charismatic,
wise-cracking, a fantastic athlete but passionate about South America and a
former freedom fighter. In this film, they’re antagonists! Part of the reason
is that there are simply too many characters, but J.R.R. Tolkien managed to
juggle 9 characters with their own stories.

Another problem is the modern setting. Modern technology
makes things much too easy. Use a radio. Fly in with a plane. There’s no real
isolation, and that kills the very idea of a lost world in the first place. Science takes a backseat to wealth. In the
book, the diamonds are an afterthought, an additional reward for our heroes’
time and effort. Here, they are the MacGuffin, the very goal of the quest. Once
the dinosaurs are seen, that’s it. They’re not the stars-they’re just more
things for our heroes to avoid.

Finally, there’s the special effects. Willis O’Brien’s name
is in the credits, but it looks like Allen spent all his time on the actors
rather than on the special effects. The dinosaurs are simply slurposaurs;
monitor lizards and iguanas with rubber horns and fins. The dinosaurs have no
majesty or drama-the effects money (and the script!) went to the volcanic
eruption as the main piece. I suspect Allen saw the original film, and instead
of focusing on the dinosaurian stars, preferred the arbitrary love triangle and
volcano (neither of which is actually in the book). They seem more of an afterthought-when Valley
of Gwangi is a better Lost World than you, you fail as an adaptation and as a movie. As both a sci-fi epic and an adaptation of the book, it falls short of
the 1925 production. It's best to summarize this movie with this image:

To be fair to Allen,
this was his debut, and much better special effects would be seen in his later films.
You can foresee his trademarks of large casts and natural disasters. I would
blame this movie not on Allen, but on a movie released very shortly before this
one. You see, another pseudoadapation of 19th century science
fiction gave this movie many precedents. Henry Levin’s adaptation of Jules
Vernes’ first palaeoepic Journey to the Center of the Earth also featured
lizards, a screaming woman, caverns, volcanoes, a cute tagalong animal, and a
human antagonist. I strongly suspect that Allen either saw the film or was
aware of its production, since the two films are very similar in their feel and
tone. Simple comparing the theatrical trailers makes a clear connection.

I have seen much worse-King Dinosaur comes to mind, but this
is a truly bad film. I would recommend watching it for curiosity’s sake or if
you want to make a Mystery Science Theater episode of your own, but really the best
way to watch it is to put in on as background noise for a party and try not to
think about the unpleasant implications for women, minorities, and innocent reptiles.
I would put it as a 30/100, mostly for Claude Rains, the sets, and matte
paintings.

Again, apologies for the lengthy recap, but sometimes you
just need to vent. Next week, I’ll be doing some book reviews and a
documentary, but first up, another featured species!

About Me

Hi everyone! You may know me already, but 99% of you won't. I've decided to make a blog for myself. I'm a anthropology student who has returned to his original passion for palaeontology. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the weird and wonderful animals that have inhabited our planet and I've made this blog to keep this in my mind and hopefully in yours. Most people blog about their interests, and while I've got a range of interests-see history and anthropology above, not to mention zoology, astronomy, art, cooking, science fiction and fantasy films and literature, and a myriad of others, the one I want to do for a living is the study of Earth's ancient past.

On this blog I'll review papers, talk about fossils, museums, and taxa, review art, film, literature, and our culture's view of paleontology, and share memories and insights. I've been inspired by the far better blogs of professional palaeontologists, and I'll share them as time goes on. I'm also open to requests and questions of opinions, the latest palaeo news, and discussions with other fans informal and professional.

I think this is going to have fun, and I'm hoping my readers will have just as much fun.

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